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GRADUATE FOG LAUNCHES NEW NAME-AND-SHAME CAMPAIGN TODAY

Are you sick of doing unpaid internships that never lead to a job – just another unpaid internship? Are you tired of waiting for politicians to clamp down on the companies which exploit their young workers and take advantage of your desperation to gain experience at any price?

Graduate Fog today launches Pay Your Interns, a new campaign which will name and shame the big companies which use interns – and don’t pay them a proper wage.

We will send an email to the press office at each of the companies listed, asking them to clarify their policy on internships. Any who do not pay their interns – and whose interns appear do be doing proper work for them – will be asked to explain how they feel this fits with the National Minimum Wage law.

Those companies which do pay their interns will be thanked for doing so. Those who do not will be listed on Pay Your Interns, for the world to see.

I’m very curious about this kind of project, I think its really great that you are making a stand where there is such little opposition to this. It’s sick how, for instance, many charities which say they are interested in poverty or social mobility hold unpaid internships.

As an ex-unpaid intern, I was wondering if a project might harm me? If my intern company were named and shamed (and they deserve to be), would it affect the fact that named employer is also one of my few actual work related references?

Am hoping you’ve already put out “feelers” to the other web sites working in this field (eg Interns Anonymous). Your campaign has the potential to take off nicely but it will involve too much work for one person to carry it through … so you need collaborators!

Am wondering whether you could categorise non-payers according to location – then send an email to each local university’s Student Union asking them to take over running the campaign?

Alternatively perhaps you could ask for individual volunteers to take over the continuing correspondence with the non-payers and let them report progress on GF?

I’m a great believer in delegation as you can see! I ran a “dog walkers’ campaign” against executive housing development planned for our local fields – our petition had far more signatures than anyone else’s and many people (including one parish council) first discovered what was planned by talking to our group.

Mary B

Posted September 12, 2011 at 10:28 PM

Wonderful! This is a fantastic initiative Tanya, it’s time these companies and their practices were shown up for their exploitative use of young people.

Congrats on this campaign Tania but perhaps something that should be highlighted is how *hard* it is for recruitment & career websites to find paid placements?

I’m not saying this to flog my website, but dabbling in online recruitment from a pure vacancy standpoint in PR & Marketing has shown me the following:

1) Companies are not interested
2) Graduates who want paid placements in media have to consider placements that have a degree of sales to these roles
3) It’s bloody hard to find these roles.

I have been spending every day this week trying to research companies which I think will want to give paid placements. I make no bones about it – I have put unpaid intern ads before on my website, but I want to source paid graduate internships now.

The reception so far I have received to asking for graduate internships, even before money has been brought up, has been quite hard for me to swallow because I would have hoped more companies/orgs have opportunities for paid NMW internships.